A Rather Surprising Twitter Myth

Summary

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Podcast Episode Summary

The Digital Marketing Podcast

Episode: A Rather Surprising Twitter Myth
Hosts: Daniel Rowles & Ciaran Rogers
Date: July 31, 2016

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Episode Overview

This episode explores a persistent myth surrounding Twitter: the belief that URL shorteners save space in your tweets. Hosts Daniel Rowles and Ciaran Rogers dissect why this myth persists, clarify Twitter's real character limits for links, and discuss the practical—and less obvious—reasons for using URL shorteners today. The conversation covers creative uses, technical nuances, analytics, brand trust, and even the pitfalls marketers should be aware of.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Twitter’s Link Character Limit: The Big Reveal

• Change in Policy:
  Twitter announced that images and links no longer consume characters from your tweet's 140-character limit—or will very soon (as of this episode's date).

  • Daniel Rowles [00:22]: "Twitter announced that when you put an image or a link into your tweets, it won't take any of your character limit anymore."

• URL Shortener Myth Debunked:
  Shortened URLs (Bitly, Goo.gl, Hootsuite's Hootly, etc.) now always take up 23 characters in a tweet, regardless of their actual length.

  • Daniel Rowles [01:27]: "Any link that you're putting into Twitter at the moment is taking up 23 characters. ... So if you think that URL shorteners are there to save you some space, you're wrong. It's a myth."

• Practical Example:
  Whether you use a short URL or a lengthy one, Twitter standardizes the space used in tweets.

2. Real Value and Use Cases for Shortened URLs

• Tracking & Analytics:

  • While not saving space, URL shorteners offer robust tracking options (e.g., Bitly click stats, Goo.gl analytics, UTM parameters).
  • Daniel Rowles [11:07]: "Anything you're tweeting or putting through a URL shortener, you can actually add Google Analytics or any other analytics tracking code into that."

• Customization and Branding:

  • Many URL shorteners allow for custom slugs, making links more memorable or on-brand.
  • Kieran Rogers [05:18]: "You can choose what the message is. ... It's a way of adding additional messaging or concepts into what you're posting if you want to get creative about it.”

• Link Tidiness:

  • Shorteners make unwieldy URLs manageable, useful for presentations or printed materials.
  • Daniel Rowles [05:51]: “If I've got a really long link, say I'm doing a presentation ... we will very often put a shortened URL at the end rather than you having to type in a really long address.”

• Potential Pitfall: Ambiguous Characters

  • Some shorteners let you avoid similar-looking characters (capital "I" vs. lowercase "L") in your custom links for clarity.

3. Creative Uses and Opportunities with Twitter’s New Rules

• Interactive Storytelling:
  Daniel shares an example where someone used multiple links in tweets to create a "choose your own adventure" story, opening doors to innovative engagement ideas.

  • Daniel Rowles [04:01]: “Within 140 characters they told a little bit of narrative and they gave you two options and you click on it and it would take you somewhere else and then there would be another tweet from there.”

• Experimentation Encouraged:
  The lift on link/image character restrictions may allow more creativity while maintaining tweet brevity.

  • Daniel Rowles [04:34]: “If you've got an unlimited number of links and images, you could do all sorts of fun things with that as well. You could take people on a journey...”

4. User Perception, Trust, and Click-Through Impact

• Brand Transparency:
  Tweets linking directly to a recognizable domain can improve click-through rates, as users better trust what they'll see.

  • Daniel Rowles [07:16]: “...When we linked to our own website, we would show—we wouldn't shorten the URL. So you could see it was on the Target Internet website. And it has improved the click through rate of those blog posts.”

• Security Concerns:
  Links masked by shorteners may be repurposed or manipulated, creating potential brand or security risks.

  • Daniel Rowles [08:59]: “There was a thing in the US...where a politician had tweeted something and someone paid the blogger to change the thing at the other end to make them look like a racist.”

5. Analytics: URL Shorteners’ Hidden Strength

• Deep Dive and Custom Tracking:
  Use unique tracking codes for each link for granular analytics; this modifies the shortened URL, enabling even finer data segmentation.

  • Daniel Rowles [11:07]: "You can take a link, add the tracking code into it, then URL shorten it, and ... you can see specifically where they've come from and which tweet.”

• Shortener Platform Differences:

  • Goo.gl provides longer data retention and QR code generation, while Bitly limits analytics history unless paid for premium access.
  • Kieran Rogers [09:37]: “I'm a big fan of Goo.gl... Bitly have ... removed the ability to go back retrospectively and see when you got traffic and where it came from over beyond sort of 30 days."

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Notable Quotes and Memorable Moments

• The Core Myth:

  "If you think that URL shorteners are there to save you some space, you're wrong. It's a myth and it used to be the case. ... Any link that you're putting into Twitter ... is taking up 23 characters."
  — Daniel Rowles [01:27]

• Creativity Born From Constraints:

  "Half of the creativity of Twitter comes from having limited characters. ... Having to fit something within a certain number of characters is a good thing."
  — Daniel Rowles [04:34]

• Transparency Builds Trust:

  "When we linked to our own website, we would show—we wouldn't shorten the URL. So you could see it was on the Target Internet website. And it has improved the click through rate of those blog posts."
  — Daniel Rowles [07:16]

• A Word of Caution:

  "URL shorteners can be a little bit dangerous. ... there's nothing to stop someone changing what's on that link at the other end."
  — Daniel Rowles [08:59]

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Timestamps for Important Segments

| Timestamp | Segment / Discussion Point | |------------|-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 00:22 | Twitter’s new link/image character policy explained | | 01:27 | Why saving character space via shorteners is a myth | | 03:08 | How Twitter displays links and user-facing character count | | 04:01 | Interactive storytelling with multiple links in tweets | | 05:18 | Using custom slugs in URL shorteners for messaging | | 05:51 | Shorteners’ value for presentations and link clarity | | 07:16 | Click-through rates and transparency: branded vs. shortened URLs | | 08:59 | Security risks and real-world manipulation incidents | | 09:37 | Comparing Bitly and Goo.gl analytics and retention | | 11:07 | Adding tracking codes & advanced analytics via URL shorteners | | 11:55 | Recap: Use shorteners wisely; awareness of pros and cons |

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Takeaways & Conclusion

• Key Takeaway:
  The idea that URL shorteners save space on Twitter is outdated. Their primary value now lies in tracking, customization, brand management, and creative applications.

• Best Practice:
  Use shorteners deliberately—when you need analytics, want custom messaging, or for clarity in non-Twitter contexts. Otherwise, consider transparent links for trust and branding.

• Final Word:
  Twitter's small tweak may excite marketers, but it's a minor adjustment. Technical details matter, but so does using the right tool for the right job.

"Don't give up on URL shorteners. But it is a myth that they're saving you space within your tweets."
— Daniel Rowles [11:55]

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Transcript

[Podcast Host]

Welcome to the Digital Marketing Podcast brought.

[Kieran Rogers]

To you by targetinternet.com hello and welcome back to the Digital Marketing Podcast. My name is Kieran Rogers.

[Daniel Rolls]

And I'm Daniel Rolls.

[Kieran Rogers]

And today, Daniel, we are talking about a Twitter myth.

[Daniel Rolls]

So this is, I think, the biggest myth in digital marketing that still exists. And there is a good reason for it because it was true, but it's not true anymore. So Twitter, let's start with a piece of news. So Twitter announced that when you put a image or a link into your tweets, it won't take any of your character limit anymore. So as you probably know, I got 140 characters in Twitter and when you add an image or a link, it takes some of that character space. So it lests you with less text to play with.

[Kieran Rogers]

Basically only 140 characters.

[Daniel Rolls]

Only 140 characters.

[Kieran Rogers]

I always thought they were just cutting me off because I was, you know, spouting rubbish.

[Daniel Rolls]

That might have been true. That might have been true. But that's a different issue and we should probably talk about that offline. What was interesting about this is that then you would say, well, okay, I need to save space my 140 characters. So actually this is great because I can now add links. And they've announced this now. They say it's going to roll out in the next couple of months. But for a long time what we've done is I'm going to put www.mywebsite.com mypagextml into my tweet and it's going.

[Kieran Rogers]

To take a load of my characters.

[Daniel Rolls]

So I don't want to lose all the characters. So I use a URL shortener. So I might use Bitly, I might use the Google URL shortener, I might use Hootly, which is built into the Hootsuite platform. But basically I'm taking my URL and I'm shortening it down to save a bit of space. So if you think that URL shorteners are there to save you some space, you're wrong. It's a myth and it used to be the case. But actually, what's the case? Now if I go into my tweet and I put in a bitly link or a Google link that is 8, 10, 12, 15 characters long, maybe 20 characters long, all of those will take up 23 characters. Even if you put a link that's less than 23 characters, it will take 23 characters. Because the way that Twitter does the role shortening. But equally, if I put a link in that is my website.com category, category two, category three mypage HTML, which is incredibly long link and maybe it's 100 characters long. And I put it into my tweet, it will take up 23 characters. So fundamentally, any link that you're putting into Twitter at the moment is taking up 23 characters. It used to be 22 because they used to be on HTTP and they're now on HTTPs. They're on a secure server now. But fundamentally you're only taking up a limited number of characters. So there is still an advantage to URL shorteners. And the advantage of URL shorteners is they will give you tracking so you're able to see who's clicked them and so on as well. You could probably see that in your analytics anyway, but it would give you a little bit of insight. So they can still be useful in a number of situations.

[Kieran Rogers]

So just clarify this for me because I'm curious about it. I've not noticed this before, but does it actually, although it takes up 23 characters, it actually displays the full URL.

[Daniel Rolls]

It doesn't show the full URL, it shows part of it and then a bit of a. Okay, so it will take up many characters space, but it might display slightly differently. Now what they're saying and which what we're really interested in, we don't know this yet, but you should definitely take a look at it is if I put five links in in the future, if none of those are going to take any space, how long can my tweet be? Because there's got to be something you can click on. So how many links can you actually put in? But what I saw was a really creative use of this the other day was you may or may not remember this used to get kids stories books that you could get to a certain page and you'd make a choice. Fight the dragon. Don't fight the dragon. And you go to page 100 or you go page to 110.

[Kieran Rogers]

The Warlock of Firetop Mountain.

[Daniel Rolls]

There you go, specific memories. Now, what I saw someone do the other day, which is really interesting, is they did it with Twitter and within 140 characters they told a little bit of narrative and they gave you two options and you click on it and it would take you somewhere else and then there would be another tweet from there.

[Kieran Rogers]

So you could choose to slay the.

[Daniel Rolls]

Orc, you could maybe do that instead, and it would take you through and you could do this. Now, if you think about little creative options like that, if you've got an unlimited number of links and images. You could do all sorts of fun things with that as well. You could take people on a journey, you could give them options, you could drive them in different directions. So I think there's some more creative stuff we'll be able to do with it. But I think half of the creativity of Twitter comes from having limited characters. So we've discussed in previous episodes that Twitter were discussing maybe removing some of those character limitations and people went crazy about it. And I think there's a good reason for that, because having to fit something within a certain number of characters is a good thing, but maybe losing quite so many to put a link in isn't that sensible? So I think this is a really logical way forward, but it is still tinkering around the edges. This isn't a radical change to Twitter. This is a very small change. What I loved is Twitter and Facebook went mad with this life changing things going on with the Twitter, mind boggling changes, huge changes and actually getting an extra 20 characters probably won't change your life. But actually it's quite interesting. I was quite excited about it as well. So it shows that the obsession of detail we get into of these things.

[Kieran Rogers]

It might do, I think. Do you know, one of the things I think a lot of people don't realize is with a lot of these URL shorteners, you can choose what the message is. It doesn't have to be a randomized character. There is the option of seeing whether you can actually put your own message on. You need to be careful because if on that platform someone else has used it, you can't customize it. But actually it's a way of adding additional messaging or concepts into what you're posting if you want to get creative about it. So yeah, explore that within your URL shortener.

[Daniel Rolls]

The other option you get as well in certainly the Google URL shortener, a few others, is that if I've got a really long link, say I'm doing a presentation and I want you to go and fill in a feedback form, we will very often put a shortened URL at the end rather than you having to type in a really long address. Now that's great. Apart from when you've got L's and capital I's and you literally can't tell the difference between them because it looks the same on some fonts, depending on the type of font you're using. So you can select with some of them the option of not using those characters that can look similar. So it's an important one to do as well. So we wrote an article and it caused a bit of controversy when, when Twitter came out and said that you won't need to use up your characters to put a link in. We wrote an article called the Death of URL Shorteners because we like to grab people's attention. And we were being a bit cheeky, I guess, in that point of view. And loads of people said, well, that's really interesting, thank you for sharing that. And one person in particular came out and went, wait, wait, wait, wait a minute. If URL shorteners aren't saving you any characters anyway, what difference will this actually make? Because people will be using your oil shorteners for different reasons anyway. Now I actually think the majority of people that are using your oil shorteners are using them because they think they're saving space. I'm pretty sure I've done six straw polls of this. So six groups of 18 or 20 people somewhere between those and so, you know, 100, 120 people. Ish. And ask them why using your oil shorteners. And all of them, not a single soul knew that it wasn't saving them any space at all. So actually I think it's a common myth. I thought it up until recently as well. So it's just worth being aware of because fundamentally it's not doing that for you. And you might actually find you don't want to use a URL shortener. It does make your tweets look a bit tidier. We've been doing an experiment at the moment and I think this was really interesting that we've stopped using URL shorteners a little bit to see what impact it has. And this was the key thing. When I share someone else's blog post, people think that I've written it and they click through and they go, oh, this isn't on Daniel's website and it's on a third party website. I'm not going to bother reading this because I wanted. I like Target Internet's blog post, perhaps. So what we started doing is when we linked to our own website, we would show we wouldn't shorten the URL. So you could see it was on the Target Internet website. And it has improved the click through rate of those blog posts. Meaning people go, I know where this information is coming from. I'm not clicking on a bitly link, not sure where I'm going. And I think from a trust point of view that's quite important because if I say this is A great article and I'm thinking, where am I going? I'm a bit concerned. Whereas if I know target Internet, or me as associate with the brand, Target Internet are linking to the target Internet website, right? They're publishing something. I can, I can trust that because I've read their stuff before and I kind of like their stuff. Assuming that you've built that trust in the first place, if you haven't, it's not going to help you. But it does take away a bit of the mystery of what I'm clicking on from that point of view as well. The other danger of URL shorteners is, and this is just one you think about from a branding point of view as a brand, if you link through to a website using a URL shortener and go, what a great article. And I've put a link in and then the URL shortener is pointing me to something else, there's nothing to stop someone changing what's on that link at the other end. Not the shortened URL, but at the other end of the URL of actually shortened in the first place.

[Kieran Rogers]

Would they do that?

[Daniel Rolls]

Well, I've seen it a few times. So what happened? And there was a thing in the US that happened this with a presidential issue where a politician had tweeted something and someone paid the blogger to change the thing was other end to make them look like a racist. So there's. You've got to be careful of your brand. If someone was particularly in sensitive areas where someone might want to hijack your brand and make Lulu look like you're saying things you're not. So from that point of view, URL shorteners can be a little bit dangerous. Generally they're great. I use hootsuite. We've used Bitly in the past. I use the Google URL shortener G O O GL still. Because that can be useful in some circumstances as well. But just be aware of. They aren't necessarily saving you space and there can be some issues with them.

[Kieran Rogers]

I'm a big fan of Goo gl. I think it's great. I think I used to be a big fan of Bitly. So what Bitly have done is they've removed the ability to go back retrospectively and see when you got traffic and where it came from over beyond sort of 30 days.

[Daniel Rolls]

Can you not pay for a service to hold onto that for longer?

[Kieran Rogers]

You know, I think they were moving in that way. I probably should refresh my memory with it. But it is super useful to be able to See that Now I know the reason why they did it was because the power to do that was taking up enormous amount of resources and actually probably not that many people are using it beyond that. But for me, as a bit more of a lazier marketer, I don't necessarily get in there every week to record what's come from what. So it's nice to have a retrospective look at that. And as far as I'm aware, goo GL just still gives me that. I also love it because they've got QR codes on it, because we're using.

[Daniel Rolls]

Those so widely anymore.

[Kieran Rogers]

But I just love seeing them. I love them. There we go. It's another story.

[Daniel Rolls]

The other thing I'd say as well is that one of the other advantages of putting URL shorteners in is if you're using tracking code. So what you can do, and anything you're tweeting or putting through a URL shortener, you can actually add Google Analytics or any other analytics tracking code into that. And you might not want people to see your tracking code. You might want to not make that visual, might want to hide it away. So actually you can take a link, add the tracking code into it, then URL shorten it, and when someone comes through to your analytics, you can see specifically where they've come from and which tweet, etc.

[Kieran Rogers]

And very important to do that, because when you shorten any URL, let's just say I shorten a URL targetinternet.com for example, it will always come up. If I do it or you do it, it will always come up with the same shortened URL. Whereas if you put in additional characters, so target Internet.com? and then whatever unique characters you want in there, actually. But normally it would be like a tracking code. The physical shortened URL changes and adjusts. So if you don't do this and you use a generic home page, for example, you can actually end up kind of skewing your results. Anyone else that's using the that is going to get their data recorded on that. It's only relevant if you're using the URL shortener analytics. But it's definitely worth being aware of.

[Daniel Rolls]

It is. Absolutely. So don't give up on URL shorteners. But it is a myth that they're saving you space within your tweets as well. Going forwards, they won't be saving anything at all because your tweets won't be counting the images and the links that you put in there as well. So use them wisely and you understand why you're using them as well. But there are some good things, there are some bad things as well. So good luck with all your Twitter efforts. We still love Twitter. We think it's a great channel, so we look forward to seeing you very soon.

[Podcast Host]

Thanks for listening to another episode of the Digital Marketing Podcast brought to you by Target Internet. If you'd like to get more information on the show, get hold of back issues of this podcast, or get details on any of the links we mentioned, please visit our website at www.targetinternet.com. if you've enjoyed the show, we would love to read your feedback. Please rate us in itunes or even better, write us a review. Or if you have any questions, please get in touch. We'd love to.